Bits and Baubles
by Mariagoner
Summary: Laurie was not exactly a stranger to making a fool of himself. It had just never happened to coincide with ladies' underwear before. Jo/Laurie, and as light-hearted as they come.


I promised I would write this and so I shall. Don't every say I don't keep my promises, fandom. ;)

**Title: Bits and Baubles  
Fandom: Little Women  
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie  
Rating: PG-13, Innuendo  
Summary: Laurie was not exactly a stranger to making a fool of himself. It had just never happened to coincide with ladies' underwear before.**

* * *

"Jo," Laurie began pleasantly enough. "Do you happen to know how many words are in the English language?"

She looked up from her smug perch on the bed and smiled. "Oh… I imagine a couple thousand?"

"Your imagination doesn't stretch quite far enough," Laurie returned dryly. "French has a standard vocabulary of 300,000 and Italian perhaps a few thousand less, but English—oh English! It's the hybrid flower of so many languages put together and thus, results in… oh, half a million words altogether, give or take the technical and scientific terms that would add another 500,000."

Jo endeavored to look impressed, although her mouth kept twitching as it fell to his legs. Laurie, with his customary touch of vanity, had long known that his brilliant wife liked to look at him. However, it was discomforting to know how much that fascination held even when he was standing before her nearly naked, wearing nothing more than a ladies' slip and a pair of stockings that were cutting off the flow of blood to his lower half– and dreading even more what else she might have him wear.

"Yes, Herr Doktor?" Jo went on, her voice much too bright for the present situation. "What, then, is your point about this all?"

"Just that," he replied, his left eye twitching slightly, "there are something over a million words in the English language… and despite it all, I can't figure out how to express the lunacy of this moment with anything other than flailing about and stamping around and possibly even cursing."

"Just don't cuss too loudly," Jo cheerfully returned, less distressed with _his_ distress than he'd have liked. "The baby's sleeping upstairs and if we wake her again, I might have to truss you up and hang you above her head-board to keep her amused for a moment."

Laurie spared the moment for a look of horror, though less for himself than the most precious new love of his life, his freshly born child, his little Eliza, his precious miracle who had lungs like a three-hundred-pound squawking sea-gull and used them very often.

"Bunkum," Laurie whispered in compliance. "Darn. Shoot. Heck."

"Don't forget drat," Jo whispered back.

Laurie forgot himself enough to grin and even lean over for a kiss—though this tender moment was quickly broken by Jo breaking the kiss by snapping those momentarily forgotten stockings against his leg.

"You do look good in those," she murmured, and smiled as though she hadn't given birth six months ago. "Are you perfectly sure you don't want to kiss me again?"

He wouldn't have minded in the least under other circumstances—but the stockings were coming close to disrupting the flow of oxygen to his brain-pan. Laurie answered by giving Jo a look of eloquent disbelief that melted into one of self-pity as he stared down at himself, then at the ensemble on the bed Jo reclined on, then back at her again.

"I've gotten the point," he said, trying for humility. "Oh, Jo, truly I have! The lot of woman has been a cruel one, ranging from Eve onwards, and you've been burdened more than is fair. Society is arrayed against you, the world genteelly despises strength in you, and you exist less as a person in the eyes of the law than as a husband's possession."

Jo looked approving. Laurie moved in for the kill.

"So do you suppose… in light of my recognizing all that… you could let me forgo wearing an actual dress…?"

Jo's smile melted, her eyebrow cocked, and Laurie quietly cursed his lifelong predilection toward fascinating, unconventional, iron-willed women. He should have known it would lead him to naught but ruin in the end.

The things he did to prove a point, Laurie thought morosely—and then reluctantly fingered that abominably scarlet new dress and even more frightening ivory corset Jo had purchased for him once again.

(Though really, Jo would have simply said it was all her husband's own fault. He should have known better than to challenge Jo on whether women's clothing was truly as uncomfortable as she often said. And then throwing down the gauntlet and daring her to actually make him as uncomfortable as she could was simply slitting his own neck.)

"At least the corset…?" he tried, giving Jo the largest, most puppyish eyes he could manage at the advanced age of seven-and-twenty. "Isn't that going a shade too far when we're merely wagering on who has to change Lizzie's diaper for the next month and a half…?"

Jo's smiled twitched in that way he couldn't help but find adorable, even when it came at his expense.

"If we're still betting… even the corset. _Especially_ the corset. Try and see if you can figure out how to breathe through your spine when it ends up curling your lungs back."

Laurie sighed. This was what he got for trying to make a jest about women's underpants. He should have known that naught but pain and grief lay in that direction.

Still, even now, Laurie found some consolations. If he could keep this on for the next three hours, he would be safe from his darling daughter's noxious under-things for at least a month. That was worth nearly any amount of pain and discomfort, to be frank.

And at least—he decided, after giving himself the critical eye in the mirror once more- the scarlet turban that went with the outfit suited him very well and brought out his cheekbones again.

"I always knew I had an interesting face that would go well with silk," he said at last, and threw a pillow at Jo when she laughed so hard at that she finally fell over.

***

[And in the aftermath of the corset.]

"Oh lord. You actually fit into that? You actually _fit_ into _that_? Oh, this is so unfair of the world. So. Ludicrously. Unfair."

"Please don't hate me for my beauty, Josephine."

"Don't worry—I'll find other reasons."

"Oh, truly? But what if I…?"

"_Oooh_…"

"And then if we…?"

"_Ah_…"

"…You know… that adorable daughter of ours will sleep for at least another hour. Maybe two."

"Hmm… very accommodating all of a sudden, that child of ours."

"It makes up for all of her recent efforts at driving us insane, yes."

"Well… I suppose if our little Lizzie is playing along…"

"Then we can play as well?"

"Oh, why not? It ought to be fun! I'll even let you take off that dress."

"Very kind of you, your majesty. So if you'll give me a moment…"

"Though I'd rather you keep the corset on, Teddy. I rather like the girlish figure it gives you."

A long pause. Anxious shuffling.

"…I'm honestly not sure how to reply to that."

"Then don't reply at all, my dear. Just come into bed!"

The sound of covers being drawn. More shuffling.

"Hmmm. Oh… my…"

"Told you. Even women's clothing, ludicrous as it sometimes is, isn't always _that_ bad."

"I… I think it's just because I can no longer… _aaah_… breathe in this position… not that you're…. _oh_… any help…"

"Yes, yes, such are the tribulations of woman. Now, try and hold still. I don't want to accidentally scrape you with my teeth once more…"

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**Author's Note**: I'm very sorry but I promised I'd write this in my last advice column. In fact, you should just be grateful I haven't yet made Jo go a step further and parade cross-dressing Laurie out on the town either. ;)


End file.
